Weekend Reading #5

I’m going to keep this weekend reading session short since life has been busy, but here are a few good reads from the past week.

Flush Your Stool Down The Funnel by Erik Meira (The Science PT)
If you aren’t already reading or listening to Erik Meira’s work, you really should be. He is a smart guy who focuses a lot on evidence-based medicine, research analysis, and sports medicine. This post is a continuation on his critique of how evidence-based medicine is being interpreted versus how it was intended. The tenets of evidence-based medicine are not equally weighted, he argues, but rather skewed in a manner that allows us to narrow down and fine-tune our decision making process.

As Workouts Intensify, A Harmful Side Effect Grows More Common by Anahad O’Conner (NY Times)
My wife first shared this article with me and I admit that I was immediately annoyed with it. Without reading it first, I argued that this was another example of one study being misused to potentially scare people away from physical activity. I was assured this was not the case and that I should read the article. Although I still think that the article could easily be misunderstood, I do think there is an important message in there from the study authors: if you are new to exercise, ease into it. This is sound advice for more than just the incredibly rare case of rhabdomyolysis. Excessive increase in activity (even for the well-conditioned) is a strong indicator for potential risk of injury.